


Familiar Strangers

by Cryptunez



Category: Bleach
Genre: Depowered Kurosaki Ichigo, Ichigo is coping, M/M, Minor character study with a side of gay, Post-Aizen Sousuke, Powerless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:46:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22832002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryptunez/pseuds/Cryptunez
Summary: After it's all said and done, Ichigo has some shit to work through.
Relationships: Grimmjow Jaegerjaques/Kurosaki Ichigo
Comments: 6
Kudos: 135





	Familiar Strangers

**Author's Note:**

> Quick note for reference, this takes place after defeating/sealing Aizen, but before the Fullbring arc and Quincy war and all that. I’m not entirely sure if that whole thing Does end up happening still or not but that’s up to your interpretation tbh ;3  
> Soooo, references to ‘the war’ etc, are towards Aizen specifically.

And he dreams, and dreams, and dreams.

And Ichigo remembers.

-

At night he can’t seem to pry his thoughts away.  
Even though he knows it happened, knows it was truth, sometimes he thinks to himself and quite can’t remember what Zangetsu felt like, or how Rukia or the others sounded.  
And on his worst nights, he forgets.

-

It’s been a good while since the war. “Since losing them” always goes unspoken when he follows that train of thought.  
Ichigo would like to think he’s doing alright; keeping up with his studies, reassuring his friends and family where he can that he’s not, in fact, dying. He’d never tell them about the sleepless nights, the terror that bolts him upright in his bed, brow slick with cold sweat when he does finally manage to pass out, that restless energy that found a home deep in his bones. Somehow, he thinks they know anyway.

So he keeps himself busy, sue him. It sure beats the alternative. 

It’s not like he’s unhappy, he tries to tell himself, and works himself half to death anyway. He’ll be into his intern year soon enough and all of that studying, and the exhaustion that seems to have made itself a permanent feature in the creases in his forehead and the bags under his eyes, will have been worth it. That’s all he’s got to worry about, Ichigo deludes.  
( _It’s much harder to keep from lying to yourself when there’s no voice arguing right back._ ) 

-

Sometimes, in the corner of his eye, he’ll see a flash of movement, feel the slightest glimmer of.. hope? Exhilaration? Only for it to be a cat darting into the alley, or a drunkard fucking off to who knows where.

His friends _try_ to keep him in the loop, but he knows they feel guilty about it. He doesn’t bring it up. 

But he sees it in the way Inoue’s eyes turn down with the corners of her lips in unspoken pity, and the lack of scorn from Ishida. And Chad, well Chad isn’t that different. All quiet strength and just Being there. He’s thankful for that; he can count on Chad not to treat him like something once-broken and only just barely pieced back together. 

He knows, too, their absence and their flimsy excuses when they go to train with Kisuke, or when all of them very obviously ignore an unseen sound. They all know what it means, but no one will say _anything_. It’s not _their_ fault but it chafes at Ichigo in a way he can’t stand.

-

A hard banging on his window startles him out of his memories. No one there but the rough knocking.

Grimmjow then.

Had to be.  
No one else had bothered to visit.

And for the life of him, Ichigo didn’t know why Grimmjow had. He certainly couldn’t get that fight Ichigo had promised him.

“Grimmjow? That’s you right?” Shit, that’s far too vulnerable, more than he was comfortable, and the bar was already so low. That got him what felt like a flick to the middle of his forehead, right between the eyes. He glares at the empty space of his room, making a rude gesture. 

He expects he must look pathetic, especially to Grimmjow’s eyes. Even if he couldn’t see shit, he’d still opened the window. Knowing Grimmjow, he’d sooner break the glass than piss off back to wherever the fuck. Probably Hueco Mundo if Ichigo’s thinking about it. 

He wonders what happened in the wake of the war, of _him_. It’s not like Soul Society will have left Hueco Mundo to their own devices. From what he’s heard from his friends, Harribel took over as queen. That didn’t bode well considering how distinctly not tolerant Soul Society was. He knew the people he cared about wouldn’t want to start anything with the hollows, but there was no accounting for Central 46, and the soutaichou. 

Ichigo must have gotten too quiet, because he feels a rough prod in his side, just between his ribs.

“What the hell, shithead? What if you’d broken a bone?” He shoves in the vague direction he thinks Grimmjow was in. Of course course he wouldn’t have broken shit, well actually, he could have easily, but still it’s the principle of the thing.

He just receives another jab in the ribs for that, softer this time. He supposes he ought to be thankful, for all his aggravating tendencies, Grimmjow could take a hint. 

“This is stupid. I can’t hear anything you’re saying.” A pinch on his forearm. 

“Stop already! Christ, I’ll get you a piece of paper or something.” Without waiting for Grimmjow to inevitably “respond” with some other way of pestering him, Ichigo gets up and rummages through the drawers in his desk. 

It’s kind of ironic to him that even with all the papers he’d been working on, he was having a hard time finding anything blank or unimportant. He ended up stumbling on an old notepad in the depths of his desk, one of Yuzu’s, probably brought on by the discovery of Kon in the house. Lightly tinted yellow, and covered in little bears in the margins. Not exactly lions, but he supposes it’s the thought that counts.

“Here” He held out the pen and pad to the empty room, feeling a little stupid.

Sure enough, Grimmjow did take it, but the notepad hovers where it was for a good moment where he was undoubtedly holding it before the pen started moving across paper. 

Ichigo tries not to look too interested, he really does, but when he’s finally able to get a real response from someone he knew before, he’s incredibly curious. 

The pad wavers, before hitting him semi lightly in the head when he doesn’t immediately take it. Lightly for Grimmjow. He frowns and snatches it away from what was probably going to be a second smack. 

There was a crude drawing of what looked like a mocking picture of him accompanying “ _You seriously didn’t think of this the first time? Real bright Kurosaki_ ” in scratchy handwriting.

“Oh fuck right off.” He rolled his eyes. “Did you actually want something aside from harassing me all night?”

“ _No I’m here to fawn allll over you like those friends of yours._ ” A pause. “ _It’s been_ boring”. Ichigo scowls in response, but hums sportingly.

“Aw, you want to play. I’m touched”. And his shit-eating grin could’ve matched Yoruichi’s. He knows the expression Grimmjow probably has on is spiteful. 

Had he been able to see it, perhaps he would have known Grimmjow only looked vaguely annoyed, with a side of familiarity. He certainly has a temper to him, that much hasn’t changed. But he almost enjoys what little interactions he can pull with Kurosaki. It’s fucking bizarre knowing the idiot can’t see him for shit, and won’t know anything he doesn’t choose to let him. Uncomplicated, in a complicated sort of way. One that Grimmjow definitely doesn’t feel like examining too closely.

-

It wasn’t the cold light of day that let Ichigo know he hadn’t slept for shit, but the alarm blaring next to him threatening to buzz right off the desk into an early death by impact. Whatever. Not like he isn’t used to going through the day without sleeping. There isn’t really anything he could do about it now, anyway. No chance in hell he’d try for a nap. 

Sighing wearily for what seemed like the tenth time that hour, he checked the clock: 6:47. Great, perfect. At least he still has plenty of time to drag himself back into some level of human cognizance. That, and it was meant to be slow today. When he doesn’t have classes, he usually just picks up the slack in the clinic. 

That unfortunately left Ichigo wide open for his mind to wander. It often does; he feels their absence like a weight on his soul. Not like it’s easy to forget. 

That thread of thought, or more accurately, feeling, is a dangerous one. A slippery slope, one that he could find himself in for the rest of the day. His father tries his best to pull him out when he notices. It doesn’t work.

So, he’ll find himself having been forcibly led to the couch where Isshin will wrap a blanket around him and regretfully return to the clinic if it’s busy. His father isn’t the most subtle, he’s obnoxious on most of his best days. But Ichigo knows he tries. He can’t be the easiest to handle while he’s so stuck in the sand of his thoughts.

Yuzu and Karin will get home, and he almost feels guilty when they see him and know he’s slipping again. Ichigo can’t bring himself to care too much, other than offering a hollow smile that they all know is just a thin tissue superglued over a hole in the wall for all the comfort it holds. They know not to touch, to get too near. But knowing they’re around, especially from the ambient noise of Yuzu preparing dinner, the scratching of pencil on paper, the far off shuffling in the clinic. It’s at the least comforting, even if it doesn’t fix the cracks. 

And Karin, she pretends not to worry, but Ichigo knows. He can see the subdued determination in her eyes, and the concern tugging at her. She sits nearby, pretending the only problems in the world are her homework, or how her team is doing. Normalcy, is the word. And they stick to it with a residing, slow desperation, stubbornly clinging to their roles. 

Sometimes, on days like these, Ichigo starts to think about anything, everything, that could distract from the aching gap in his soul. Sometimes he thinks about everyone else, about Rukia, Renji, Hanataro and the rest. He knows Soul Society must have ordered something or other against contact. He hopes so, at least. The alternative is more depressing than he thinks he can handle right now. 

But he shouldn’t think that, he catches the implications in what his friends don’t say. They pussyfoot around it as if one wrong step would cause him to crumble. Who is he kidding, he very well might. Isn’t that what he’s doing right now? And that’s depressing too. 

Sometimes, sometimes, his mind wanders back to Grimmjow. At least that’s a reprieve from the usual. At least, at least, at least. It’s always about at least. At least he’s not dead. At least _they’re_ not dead. At least they won.

( _So why did it feel so much like losing?_ )

-

Another familiar, harsh pound on his door shook the apparent daze that he’d settled into. He didn’t like being caught off guard, but it seemed to be happening more and more often as of recently.

“Open up, Kurosaki!” 

So it was Grimmjow. Again.

The bastard had showed up in a gigai just so he could cuss Ichigo out where he would hear it.

Ichigo couldn’t figure out what kept him coming back, despite obviously not delivering on his supposed debt anytime soon. The hell did Grimmjow have to gain from this pseudo domestic act? He supposed he didn’t mind it so much, all things considered. 

That’s not to say they didn’t fight at all, definitely not. They just fought in different ways.  
Karin had called it their way of showing affection, to which both Grimmjow and Ichigo bristled and spluttered.

If Ichigo hadn’t known any better, he’d have thought he saw a blush painting Grimmjow’s cheeks despite the venomous scowl etched onto his features. Huh. And wasn’t that something to think about. 

He brushed it off as his imagination, but it still came up in his thoughts when he was alone with them.  
So did Grimmjow himself, actually. Funny that.

“What do you want, asshole?”, Ichigo yelled back through the door, decidedly not getting up from where he’d been relaxing spread across his bed.

As if he could tell Ichigo would not be moving, Grimmjow just barged in and demanded a rematch.

“Grimmjow it’s 10 pm, I’m not fighting you now.”  
The man in question just scoffed and rolled his eyes,

“Not that. Did it slip your mind that easily? Dumbass.” And had it not been Grimmjow he’d have thought it’d been fond.  
Oh shit, it was family game night.

He started to wonder then, about what led to this point, that Grimmjow was in his house, fetching him to go play games with his family for the Kurosaki household game night. Assumedly sent by Yuzu. Strange happenings indeed.

“C’mon Kurosaki, your weirdass family’s waiting.” He leaned on the doorframe, regarding Ichigo with a strange, warm look. It didn’t suit him, but then, it didn’t not suit him either.  
Maybe it was just unexpected. 

Though, he’d been seeing that look more often lately. He sort of liked it, if he was being honest.  
“Yeah yeah, I’m going already.”  
( _You spend so much time around them, what does that say about you, weirdass._ )

Ichigo pushed off from the bed to nudge Grimmjow’s shoulder with his own and a mischievous smirk.  
“Didn’t think you were a masochist, _Grimm_. ‘Cause you’re just begging for another loss. That’s pretty bad, even for you.” A shit eating grin on his face and a glint in his eye, Ichigo spiritedly* bounced downstairs.

The inexplicable soft look on Grimmjow’s face melted off and he snarled, a wide smile quickly replacing it, and gave chase nigh immediately. They both knew it was all in good fun though. Now that Ichigo was exclusively human, their fights had been downsized to little squabbles and competing over pretty much anything .

And his family had become so used to it that they hardly even looked up from an intense game of connect four when the pair tumbled across the floor, barely avoiding hitting the wall across. 

How strange how things had come to be.

**Author's Note:**

> *pun intended babey
> 
> I’m gonna be real with you this was intended to be a light-hearted semi-serious character bit with some 615 sprinkled in, but then this happened


End file.
